


It Takes a Village

by LilyRosePotter



Series: Life smiles back at you [3]
Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Found Family, Kidfic, M/M, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 12:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16158761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyRosePotter/pseuds/LilyRosePotter
Summary: “Lovett, I’m sorry, we won’t ask you to babysit again,” Jon apologizes again.“Shut up,” Lovett laughs. “You know we love your terrors. Anyway, they still managed to prompt a conversation about having our own.”





	It Takes a Village

**July 2022**

“So um, the kids were perfectly behaved last night you said?” Tommy asks innocently as he drops into the chair next to Lovett in the studio.

“Yeah!” Lovett lies, too quick.

Tommy smirks. The one thing their four-year-old twins have never been is perfectly behaved. The odds of that once in a lifetime occurrence happening while Lovett and Ronan babysat is… low.

“They didn’t talk you into cookies for a snack after dinner?” Lovett looks down at the table. “No one pulled on Pundit’s curls? Both asleep by eight o’clock?”

“How do you always _know_?” Lovett whines.

Tommy laughs. “The dad instincts come with the sleepless nights.”

“And Caro ratted you out for the _three hours late_ bedtime,” Jon adds as he walks into the studio.

“Your children are terrors,” Lovett mutters.

“Sorry,” Jon apologizes immediately, just like he does every time. “Someone never tells them no,” he glares at Tommy.

Tommy shrugs, sheepish. Before the twins were born, they’d had many discussions about how they would raise their kids, deciding that Tommy would probably be the strict dad when necessary.

A few weeks ago, Jon dramatically flopped down on their bed, whining, “Tommy could you just tell her no _one time_? Like, can you make sure there’s a single moment in Caroline’s life when she hears the word no from your mouth?”

Tommy sighed. The thing is, she’s persuasive. The thing is, she’s a little manipulative. The thing is, she’s too smart for her own good. The thing is, she’s the spitting image of Jon and Tommy can’t deny the wide brown eyes and gap-toothed grin on either of their faces. The thing is, “we should have seen this coming,” he said, sitting on the bed.

“If you enforce bedtime tomorrow, I’ll blow you,” Jon offered weakly.

Tommy laughed. Parenting. “Deal.” The kids had been in bed by seven-thirty. He changed all the clocks.

Lovett rolls his eyes at them. “I think _multiple_ someones never tell them no.”

“Lovett, I’m sorry, we won’t ask you to babysit again,” Jon apologizes again.

“Shut up,” Lovett laughs. “You know we love your terrors. Anyway, they still managed to prompt a conversation about having our own.” He claps a hand over his mouth like a cartoon character.

“ _Lovett_!” Jon yelps.

“You guys are having a baby?” Tommy asks hopefully. It’s about damn time.

“Not yet!” Lovett yelps, cornered. “Not imminently! Just… we want to, at some point. You knew this!”

Jon grins, sitting back in his seat. “Soon,” he says smug. “Elijah you ready?”

“Been ready boss.”

 

**October 2022**  

“We’re going to have a kids-only wedding party, all our nieces and nephews parading down the aisle cause like-” Lovett shrugs. “I wanted to check with you two that it’s okay if we ask the twins? We’re making, you know, little basket things?”

“You-” Jon chokes. “You want the twins… In your wedding?”

“Yes obviously?” Lovett says with false bravado. “They’re my niece and nephew.”

“Oh.” Jon is full on crying now. Tommy’s got a suspicious lump forming in his own throat but he’s holding it together so far as Jon pulls Lovett in for a tight hug.

“I take it back, I don’t want to have any relation to you ever. Stop _hugging me_ ,” Lovett snaps irritably, but he’s still grinning.

Jon sobs through the whole wedding from their seats in the front row. Tommy’s pretty sure his hand is permanently numb from lack of circulation, Jon is clutching it so hard. Maybe he lets a few tears slip too. Maybe.

It’s beautiful, the farm decked out with the tents and chairs and flowers that should probably just be permanent installations at this point. Tommy’s not sure how many weddings Mia has hosted, but it must be dozens.

The kids make it down the aisle without incident, though Declan lost his bow tie at some point pre-ceremony. He’s not covered in dirt yet so Tommy is calling it a win. Caroline, on the other hand, looks like a doll, dress and curls pristine with the efforts of a hairdresser instead of her hapless dads. Tommy’s got a curl cream recommendation in his phone that will hopefully work with the detangling spray Alyssa had ordered them on Amazon when Jon called her crying to help tame the rats nests that seem to sprout daily.

“I now pronounce you lawfully married.” Someone lets out a wolf whistle, Lovett and Ronan kiss, Jon sobs.

“Remember when we did that?” Tommy murmurs sotto voce as the newlyweds walk down the aisle.

Jon grins at him, teary. “You mean you’ve been thinking about anything else all day?” he asks. “And now we’re _married_ , and we have these,” he lifts Caro to his hip as she runs at him, pressing their noses together, “adorable children who were _so wonderful_ in their uncles’ wedding.”

“We’ve done alright,” Tommy agrees, snagging Declan’s vest with a hand before he can get distracted by the flowers on the end of the row.

Jon _barely_ manages to hold back the sobs while he gives his toast, taking long pauses in places he didn’t practice taking them, breathing carefully. Of course it manages to sound good, charismatic fucker that he is. Lovett’s definitely crying by the end of it, no matter what he claims about dust in the air.

Jon and Lovett are _both_ crying when Tommy finds them outside the tent during the dancing. Caro is spinning around with Alyssa and Howli and Declan has dragged Dan outside to look at stars. Tommy is warm with alcohol and love for their family.

“No seriously, I’m proud of you,” Jon is saying, hugging Lovett tightly, as Tommy walks up.

“Fuck you,” Lovett mumbles into his shoulder. “You and your fucking buzzcut… No no, no group hugs... Thomas!”

 

**May 2024**

“She’s five, her name is Destiny, we’re picking her up from her foster home next week,” Lovett grins, while Jon and Tommy stare at him. They’re at fucking Chipotle.

“Next week?” Tommy asks dumbly. “You’ve kept this quiet!”

“You knew we were dealing with adoption bullshit,” Lovett says easily. “That’s how this goes, hurry up and wait and then all of a sudden,” he splays his fingers, “kid.”

“I don’t think it goes exactly like that,” Tommy mutters.

“So- so is Ronan moving out here full-time?” Jon asks. “Finally?”

Lovett scoffs at him.

“That’s some heteronormative white picket fence bullshit.”

Jon winces.

“I mean, two parent homes though?” Tommy offers, to take the glare off of Jon and because he’s curious too.

He can’t imagine how that will work. He can’t imagine accepting up front that Jon might be gone three weeks out of a month sometimes and five days out of the month others. He’s never quite figured out how they manage it, Lovett and Ronan. They clearly do, content with each other for all these years, so Tommy doesn’t question it too much. With a kid though…

Caro screaming for hours as a colicky baby, Declan refusing to go to sleep without his twelve stuffed animals and his magnifying glass, the month Caro would only eat orange foods, each of their temper tantrums, the endless questions “how does _that_ work Daddy?” He can’t imagine doing that without Jon in bed with him at the end of the day. He feels like he’s drowning when Jon travels for a weekend.

“Look,” Lovett says firmly, sharply. “One, still a two parent home. Two, don’t you think she’d be worse off if we weren’t happy and fulfilled? Ronan’s gotta do his reporting and I’m not about to follow him around the world like a sad army wife. I could move to New York I guess, and get him slightly more frequently, though he’d still travel a ton, but then _I’d_ be leaving the work that makes _me_ fulfilled. And leaving you guys.

“All kinds of people have kids when one parent travels all the time for work. He’ll be here when he can, and probably for the next couple months while she settles in unless some terrifying story calls, and it’s not like we lack the money or the community to make it work. Unless you two are planning to disappear from my life?”

“ _Never_ ,” Jon swears, reaching across the table to squeeze Lovett’s hand.

Lovett rolls his eyes at Tommy. “I was _joking_.” He sighs. “About the disappearing, not about the rest of it. This is who we are and we have a lot of love to give, even if it’s not in conventional ways. I think- we didn’t decide this lightly guys, we’re pretty sure we can be good parents.”

“I know you _will_ be good parents,” Tommy says quietly, holding his eyes.

“I can’t wait to meet her,” Jon adds, smiling wide.

 

***

 

The twins are not handling the news that they’re getting a cousin well.

Caroline, who’s mostly grown out of tantrums, throws an epic tantrum three days after Lovett and Ronan sit them down and tell them about their new addition. When Tommy tries to right her room after Jon has taken her to their bed to cuddle, he realizes that most of what she’s thrown at the wall are toys and trinkets that her uncles have given to her.

Declan just goes quieter, which Tommy didn’t know was possible for their shy space cadet son, sulking with his telescope and Leo in the yard every night and asking to call Dan three times more often than normal.

The internet tells him helpfully that children can get jealous when they feel displaced by new family members. Three hours down the wormhole later, he has four good articles to send Jon.

“Hey kiddos, can we talk?” Tommy turns the TV off as Jon leads the twins to the table.

“You know,” Jon says carefully. “I love your Uncle Lovett a lot. We’ve been best friends since long before you were born?”

Caroline nods warily. “Uh huh.”

“Part of loving someone is sharing them. Being happy for them even when it means you don’t see them as often or your relationship changes.” Declan sniffs. “Sweeties, they're not going to love you less and you're going to have a new cousin."

“And we’ll all get to love her too,” Tommy adds softly. “Yeah?”

The nods are accompanied by tears, but there are two of them.

“They’re still your Uncle Lovett and Uncle Ronan, that isn’t going to change,” Jon promises.

“Okay,” Caro whispers.

"Okay,” Tommy pulls her into his lap and kisses her head. “You want to  go get pizza?"

 

***

 

A couple of days after Ronan and Lovett bring Destiny home, they bring the twins over to meet her, armed with Chinese food and legos.

“Desi,” offered in a whisper when Tommy met her yesterday, is quiet and tiny, eyes darting around the room. But she already seems most comfortable perched in Lovett’s lap, his eyes shining looking down at her, Ronan’s smile unceasing as he looks at them both.

When they bring the kids into Lovett’s living room Desi is sitting on the floor by the couch at Lovett’s feet, his fingers twitching towards her like he just wants to hide her away. Tommy’s fingers and heart ache with recognition as he let’s go of his careful grip on Caro’s hand.

Caroline, always the bravest, always the social butterfly, crosses the room slowly, dropping to the ground a careful distance away from Desi, who looks at her nervously. “Hi, I’m Caro. Do you like Legos?”

Desi shrugs at her. Caro nods.

“Decccc,” Caro calls, impatient, and Declan twists to take the bag of Legos from Jon’s backpack with a soft smile, joining the girls on the floor.

Ten minutes later they’ve built a giant tower and they’re all giggling on the floor.

Lovett grins at Jon as he digs in the takeout bag for his spring rolls. “I think this is gonna work.”

“Something about a village, I think?” Jon laughs, leaning into Tommy’s arm around him.

“Something about a family,” Tommy corrects with a smile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Desi truly belongs to Screech and I'm deeply grateful to her for sharing <3
> 
> I'm always yelling about these idiots on [tumblr](everyonewillsee.tumblr.com)


End file.
